


The Dream

by fingalsanteater



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Book 41: The Familiar, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, F/M, Gen, Jake's POV, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-08 19:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11088390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingalsanteater/pseuds/fingalsanteater
Summary: “Bad dream,” Cassie said to the left of me, in the driver’s seat. Not a question. I didn’t bother answering. She knew as well as I did what nightmares were made of. She was part of mine.





	The Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [interabang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interabang/gifts).



I awoke with a jolt. Something was constraining me, choking me, and I clawed widely, blindly, trying to free myself.

“Jake! Jake!” Came a sharp voice. My vision cleared and I was looking out a dusty, cracked windshield. The air was chilly, but I was sweating, and my seatbelt had shifted upwards as my body slumped, pressing against my throat. It was so dark outside that it almost seemed we were driving into nothingness, headlights barely making a dent in the night. Tall trees stood like shepherds to the side of the road, herding us to our destination.    

“Bad dream,” Cassie said to the left of me, in the driver’s seat. Not a question. I didn’t bother answering. She knew as well as I did what nightmares were made of. She was part of mine.

The last thing I remembered was waking up and calling Cassie. My Cassie - not the angry, ruthless, terrorist next to me. We talked briefly and I had felt better, knowing that at least she knew I cared, even if she wasn’t okay. I went back to bed and just closed my eyes for a second, waiting for Mom to pop in and tell me waffles were ready.

And here I was, back again in this nightmare where the Yeerks had won. Or had they?

“Cassie,” I asked, “did we – did we stop them?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t quite the bitter sound I remembered. “He really knocked your head a lot harder than I thought,” she said, confusing me even more. “We did it, Jake. No Kandrona sun, and we didn’t even destroy the moon. Just how you wanted it – low casualties.” I was still wondering who she meant by he, when something made a muffled sound in the back seat. I twisted my body to look behind me.

He was hog-tied, struggling slightly in the back seat, lips stretched around a piece of cloth in his mouth gagging him, his shirt pulled up over his head, obscuring his vision and his face from me. He rolled over on his side, and I caught sight of a long white scar running diagonally across his chest, up all the way to his shoulder. The cluster of three freckles in the shape of a triangle to the right above his collar bone gave away his identity.

“Marco,” I whispered, and he began to struggle more.

I recalled playing in the sun in Marco’s backyard when we were kids, shirts off and in just our shorts, dry grass prickling our bare feet. Sometimes his mom would let us play in the sprinkler, and we’d get soaking wet, Marco’s hair flopping in his eyes and he’d push it back with his hand and give me a double thumbs up in a poor imitation of the Fonz. Water glistened off his shoulders and I remembered noticing how the freckles stood out against his skin, especially as it darkened the longer we spent in the sun.

Memories of a time long gone both here and outside this nightmare. 

“You’d better not be getting second thoughts about this,” said Cassie. “I had to turn in a lot of favors to get this car and the keys to a safe house. We should have just killed him.”

I turned back to Cassie, away from Marco. 

“No. No second thoughts,” I told her. I was getting used to filling in the blanks. We were going to starve out Marco’s Yeerk.

* * *

We had to untie Marco to get him in the house. I was strong, but Marco was heavy, taller than he had been at thirteen, and thickly muscled. Cassie left the headlights on to cut through the darkness as she untied just the portion of the ropes holding Marco’s legs. He started kicking as soon she was through, but, between us, we dragged him out of the car.

He hit the ground with a hard thump, then quickly surged to his knees. His face met my thigh, nose smashing into the muscled flesh under my jumpsuit. He made a choked noise of surprise and pain, pulling away so quickly that he fell back into the gravel of the driveway. The shirt that served as the makeshift blindfold rucked up to his forehead, exposing one eye. He looked almost like a deranged pirate.

“Here,” said Cassie, handing me a knife. “Incentive.” She was never going to be my Cassie, but in moments like these I appreciated her differently. She reminded me of Rachel, in a way.   

I saw fear flash in Marco’s free eye and, underneath, a glint of satisfaction I knew had to be Marco himself. Good, I thought. Good.

I dragged Marco to his feet and manhandled him across the yard with Cassie’s help. When he struggled, I pressed the blade against his back. The Yeerk in him obeyed when the knife touched him, and I thought he must have been remembering what gave him those scars across his chest and face. We walked Marco across the yard, the beams of light from the headlights bathing the overgrown yard in strange shadows. The grass and weeds rustled, crickets chirping loudly.  

The steps to the sagging porch of an old farmhouse creaked underneath our feet. I held Marco firmly, knife pressed against his spine while Cassie unlocked the door. The windows of the house were darkened, curtains pulled tight against prying eyes. Finally, after using her shoulder to force the door, she got it open.

The house was pitch black, just the light from the car's headlights allowing us to see anything. Cassie fumbled with something for a few seconds and I heard the sound of a match being struck. I spied the half-melted candles on the grimy coffee table right before she started lighting them. There were two couches covered in sheets, and an entertainment center with a TV. On top of it were several pictures of a family – a man, a woman and two blond girls. I wondered what happened to them. Maybe they were infested by Yeerks. Maybe they were dead. I knew which was the better option.

“When it’s day, we have to keep the curtains closed,” Cassie said, pulling my focus away from the pictures, “so the candles will have to stay lit. Not much light gets through. I have more candles in the car.”

Marco had been quiet with the knife pressing against his back, but when Cassie went into the kitchen to grab a sturdy chair to tie him to, he began to fight with me. He stomped my foot and kicked me in the knee, causing it to buckle. I righted myself quickly despite the pain, and I grabbed him before he could make a run for it. In my struggle to get ahold of him, the knife cut a gash into the meat of his bicep. 

“There’s only one way this will end Yeerk,” I growled.

Marco was still gagged and blinded, so all he could do was scream through the cloth in his mouth and try to kick at me. Cassie came up behind him as he tried to orient himself to slam his body against me, pan in her hand and a grimace on her face. The pan made a resounding clang when she hit him over the head and he crumpled to the floor at my feet.

“I hope the Yeerk felt that,” she said, and even though I agreed with her, the cruelty of her words sent a chill through me, reminding me again that she wasn’t my Cassie.

We tied him to the chair, ankles spread and tied to the legs, arms strapped firmly to his sides by the rope which wrapped around his middle and the back of the chair several times. His shirt was still pulled up around his head, so the rope dug into the skin of his chest and belly.

“Watch him,” said Cassie tersely, and she went outside. I heard the car start and I was just a little afraid she’d left me, but she came back after a few minutes with a bag of supplies.

She tossed the bag on the couch. “I parked the car in the barn. If the Yeerks do an aerial sweep looking for him, they should miss us.”

“Good thinking, Cassie,” I told her, and a small, sad smile curled her lips.

She sighed and said, “You remind me so much of your old self, when we were kids. We thought we could save the world, just the six of us. Remember?” She turned away from me. “God, we were so stupid. I was so - so weak.” Anger flooded her bitter words.   

I approached her cautiously, hand outstretched, wanting to comfort her. When my fingers met the curve of her back, she flinched slightly, but let me slide my large hand up to rest on her thin shoulder. I squeezed gently.

“Cassie, no. You weren’t weak,” I told her with conviction. “You were – you were, maybe, the strongest of us all. I mean, look how you’ve survived. You’re still fighting.” I paused, took a deep breath. “I never thought you were weak,” I added. “I needed you.”

She shrugged off my hand and I dropped it to my side awkwardly. Turning toward me she said, “Marco was always the sweet-talker, I remember.” She laughed a little. “But, you – you had a way of cutting right to the heart of things.”

Then she pushed up on her tip-toes and pressed a kiss to my mouth. It was a quick peck, almost chaste. I ached for more. I pulled her closer to my body - a man’s body in this nightmare, pressing close to the body of woman who I cared about, still cared about – and deepened the kiss. She was small in my arms, just like my Cassie was. The heat that had filled me as I kissed her was suddenly doused with ice water. I remembered her - my Cassie, the one who’d sleepily told me she wasn’t okay this morning - and I knew that the woman in my arms wasn’t and hopefully never would be her.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, pulling away, perceptive as always.

I made up a lie. “It’s him.” I flicked my eyes to the center of the room, where Marco sat, tied and still knocked out.      

She frowned. I wasn’t sure she believed me. “You’re right,” she finally said. I loosened my grip on her and she stepped back, out of my arms. “I need to sleep anyway. I drove all night while you napped.”

I didn’t think being unconscious counted as a nap, but I didn’t contradict her.

“I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”      

A terrifying thought occurred to me just as she turned away. “Wait,” I said, “can he morph?”

“No. He can’t anymore. They cured –” she practically spat the word – “us of morphing. Or so they said. You regained your ability, so he might to. I’d watch him carefully.” She sounded so bitter. She missed her morphing, I bet. When I hadn’t been able to morph, it had felt like I was missing a limb. I could only imagine how much worse it felt for her.     

After I heard a door close upstairs, I pulled the sheet off one of the couches and settled back to keep watch over Marco. Three days. Three days and I could have my best friend back. Maybe even less than three days.

I heard a drip-drip-drip on the wood floor. At first I thought it was something leaking through the upstairs floor, but when I looked closer, I realized it was the sound of blood seeping steadily from the wound in Marco’s arm and hitting the floor. I dug through Cassie’s supply bag, but it didn’t include first aid. I didn’t want to leave the room and risk Marco escaping somehow, however.

Creeping closer to him, I could hear harsh, quick breaths whistling through his nose. Even though this was just some nightmare, some strange dream, the desire to save my friend was still so strong. I didn’t want him to die. I decided to ungag Marco so he could breathe better, pocketing the gag in case I needed it later. I pulled the shirt that was strangling Marco’s face back down to cover his scarred body, uncovering the scars on his face in the process.

Using the knife, I ripped the sleeves off Marco’s shirt and fashioned one into a makeshift bandage. It would have to do until Cassie came back and I could look for something better.

Marco moaned and I took a step back, watching as his face scrunched up when he registered the pain he was in.

“Ow,” he said, pausing to groan. “Did you get the license plate on that one?” He asked woozily, with a lilt that made it sound like he was joking. I didn’t respond.

“Man, Jake. I think she knocked that Yeerk right out of my ear.” I took another step back.

He cracked open his eyes and grinned, white teeth splitting his face into a smile that could be Marco. 

“Not falling for it are you,” he said, when I still didn’t respond. “I got an knot on my head as big as your brain and you still aren’t falling for it. Maybe I should have kept a few more parts of this brain.” He titled his chin up and grinned like it was the funniest thing in the world.

I thought about putting the gag back in his mouth, maybe even literally sticking a sock in it. Marco would appreciate the humor in that after he got over having my sock in his mouth. But, this was my nightmare and I was curious how different this Yeerk was from the one I had in me. Would he cry and beg? Would he offer me anything I wanted? Would it just give up and slide out onto the floor to be stomped by my boot? It was an opportunity to understand an enemy and I didn’t want to pass it up.  

Marco’s grin grew more sinister until it was more a sneer. “This is all for nothing, you know,” he said, somehow gloating despite being the one at my mercy.  “You’re overrun. We’ve won. When I get out of here, I am fixing that beam and your moon will sustain us here on Earth. You should just give up, Jake.”

“It’s not for nothing,” I said, and took my place back on the couch. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, watching the Yeerk inside my friend try to figure out how to get inside my head.

Marco’s eyes were bright, pupils wide and dark. He narrowed them, watching me back.

“I bet you wonder how I got these scars, huh?” He finally said. “Pretty dashing and handsome, in a grizzled sort of way, don’t you think? And, hey, you added to my collection.” He glanced at the wound on his arm. I refused to feel guilty. Marco would understand.   

“You know your girlfriend upstairs? She really keeps some nasty company. One day, I’m just minding my own business, ordering my Hork-Bajir to clean out a hospital. All those sick and old people, ugh. Terrible hosts.” He smiled, trying to unnerve me. Bile rose in my throat at his cavalier tone, but I didn’t react. His smile faded into a frown quickly. “Well, anyway. One of my Hork-Bajir turned on me. It was actually a spy, but I didn’t know that until later. Got me across the chest and face, as you can see.” He tilted his face towards me, turning his head so the side with the worst scaring shown in the light of the candles. “It died very slowly and painfully, let me tell you.”

“Sounds like you were pretty stupid to let a spy among your ranks,” I said.

Marco laughed. “I knew you’d say that. But my story comes with a moral. Trust no one.” He paused, obviously gearing up for some dramatic statement. “How much do you know about Cassie?”

Now I was the one laughing. “Really?” I asked, shocked at how bad at this Visser Two was. I thought he was a Yeerk who had done many terrible things and was infesting one of the smartest people I knew. Instead, he could barely talk his way out of a wet paper bag.

“Really,” he said. “What if I told you there was no Yeerk in my head? That I’m all Marco. That everything I did, I did to destroy the Yeerks. That beam, the one you destroyed? I was going to use it to destroy Yeerk communications and ships in orbit. I’m an inside guy. What if I told you that Cassie was the bad guy here?”

I laughed humorlessly. “If you told me that, I would tell you to shut up,” I said, standing up and pulling the gag out of pocket.

“Wait, wait!” He said, desperate. “Come on, Jake. Think about i-” I shoved the gag back in his open mouth.

I knew Cassie was dangerous, her morals questionable. I knew she’d lied to me, used me. But, I knew she wasn’t the bad guy. That much I still knew.

Marco’s eyes on me were livid, angry. He knew that I knew that he was liar.

We watched each other a few more hours until Cassie finally came downstairs. Light was peeking through the windows now, blocked by the thick curtains so that only a hazy half-light shown through. She yawned and sat on the couch next to me, putting her head on my shoulder. Her sudden familiarity with me made me uncomfortable, but it also felt good to feel her pressed against me.

“He’s pale and sweaty,” she said. “We’ve probably got about two days.”

“Then what?”

“Then we use him!” She had that intense tone again, like when she realized I could help the EF with their goals. “I want to know everything that Yeerk knew. Marco’s been Visser Two for years – he has to know what the Yeerks are planning. We’ll use their own against them.”

It wasn’t a plan, but it was a promise. Something to hold onto. With Marco on our side with Yeerk secrets in his head, we had a chance.

Marco’s head drooped; he looked as exhausted as I felt.

Cassie and I stayed on the couch, just waiting. Eventually, I dozed off.

* * *

The sound of a bell jarred me awake. The bell signaling the end of class. I didn’t even remember going to school. Someone was poking me in the shoulder.

“Wakey wakey, Jake-y Jake-y” a voice whispered in my ear. I jumped about a mile.

“Whoa! Chill out. It’s just me,” said Marco, holding up his hands like he was trying to calm a scared animal. It reminded me of something Cassie would do. My eyes searched Marco’s youthful, unscarred face, looking for – well, just looking. He was staring at me like I was crazy, like he was my Marco and not Visser Two. Relief flooded me and I sighed. 

“Bad dream?” Asked Marco.

“The worst,” I said, gathering my stuff. I was in the library. It must have been my study period. My hands were shaking and the pen I was trying to grab fell to the floor. Marco picked it up for me, pressed it into my trembling fingers.

He asked, sounding worried, “You okay, man?”

“Yeah,” I lied. He walked with me to my next class, idly joking about what we thought was going to happen on Star Trek later that night. He shot curious, concerned glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.

I made it through the rest of the day, but I was so exhausted. I felt like I’d been sleeping forever, but also like I hadn’t slept in a hundred years.

I fell into bed when I got home, still in my school clothes.

* * *

Someone was shaking me awake.

“Jake, wake up.” It was Cassie – future Cassie. “Jake, something is happening.” Adrenaline was burning through my veins like fire and ice combined; my eyes shot open and I was blind, like I’d just closed my eyes in my sunny bedroom and opened them here where it was dark save for the candles.

I blinked, clearing my vision as quick as I could. When the spots in my eyes subsided, I could make out Marco was the something that was happening. He was convulsing, eyes rolled up in his head so that all I could see was white.

I jumped up from the couch, but I wasn’t sure what to do. I was disoriented, screaming inside my mind for this nightmare to end, screaming for Marco who was obviously in pain. I needed to wake up back in my bed. I swore I could feel the sheets brushing against my skin.

I reached out, disoriented still and desperately thinking I could grab hold of my phantom bed and yank myself back to reality, but Cassie, mistaking my intention, said, “Don’t touch him, Jake! This is it. The Yeerk has given up already.”

I watched in horror as the gray slug body of the Yeerk poked its way out of Marco’s ear, plopped on his shoulder and then fell wetly onto the dusty floor.

Before I could even blink, the heel of Cassie’s boot came down with a squelch, smashing the Yeerk into the floorboards. She viciously kicked the broken body of Visser Two into the years cold ashes of the fireplace.

“Good riddance,” she said triumphantly, he tone almost making me wince. But, I didn’t have time to worry about her when Marco was shuddering with aftershocks. I gently began untying him, pulling the gag from his mouth. He was barely conscious, moaning in pain, moaning nonsense.

“Kan… drona,” he muttered.

“What did he say?” Cassie asked, pushing me away. She shook him by the shoulders, patted his cheeks to spur him into consciousness.

“What did you say about Kandronas?” She practically yelled. “Tell me, Marco. I need to know!”

“Cassie, stop!” I pulled her away from him. Without the rope to hold him in place, he crumpled sideways onto the floor. It was disgustingly reminiscent of how the Yeerk had just fallen from his ear.

“Jake,” said Cassie, coldly, “He needs to tell us what he knows.”

“He will,” I snapped, “just give him a little bit.”  

Her eyes were wide, fearful, angry. I wanted to make her okay.

I was holding her upper arms in my hands, fingers curled gently around. I stroked down over the smooth and scarred skin of her arms, over her elbows and the knobby bones of her wrist.  I tried to entangle our fingers, but she pulled away from me, crossing the room to sit on the staircase. As much as I knew she wasn’t my Cassie, she was still Cassie, and it hurt.    

“We should get him cleaned up,” she said, clambering to her feet. “I’ll see if there’s anything upstairs he can wear.”

When I turned, Marco’s eyes were open and he was staring at me, though he hadn’t moved from the floor.

“I like her,” he said, a crooked smile pulling at his lip.  

I didn’t return his smile. “Me too,” I said, but I was thinking of my Cassie. The one who would be helping Marco instead of trying to hurt him more. My head hurt and my heart hurt with a deep, resounding ache. I missed her.

Marco pushed himself up into a seated position with a groan. I crossed the room and held out my hands to pull him up. His hands were soft against mine, body hard where he leaned against me as I helped him to the couch.

“She was right to want to kill me, you know,” he said, voice choked. “You should have let her.”

“No,” I said. “Not if there’s a better choice.”

I was thinking about how I had almost left him and Rachel to die.

He snorted dismissively. “You know sometimes the better choice involves dying. I’m more trouble than I’m worth. Any information I give you won’t make it half-way across this state. It’ll be a surprise if we make it out of this place alive.”

Anger at his hopelessness boiled my blood. “Look at how far we’ve made it already!” I was so exhausted, so sick of this nightmare.

Marco looked unimpressed by my outburst, but he didn’t offer a retort.

“You’re free,” I said, trying to soften my tone, trying to control myself. “We stopped the plan to turn the moon into a Kandrona sun. That’s something.”

He said, “Now that’s funny. Come on, Jake. You know none of us will ever be free.”

Marco without Visser Two in his head was somehow worse than Visser Two himself. At least I knew Visser Two was a liar.

Cassie came down the stairs then, a bundle of clothing in her hands.

“He tell you anything?” She asked, tossing the clothes on the couch next to Marco.

“Hello to you too, Cassie. Long time, no see. And no, I didn’t tell him anything yet. There’s not much to tell that you don’t already know.”

“What?” She lurched forward, but I held her back with a hand on her arm. “You’re lying!”

Closing his eyes, distress pulling his face tight, Marco said, “The Kandrona Sun was Visser Two’s baby. He wasn’t involved in any of the other high security plans for Earth. Only the Council knows the full scope of the Yeerk Empire’s plans for the galaxy and Earth. By now, they’ve probably promoted Visser Three to take his place and fix the project.”

Cassie was trembling under my hand. “It’s a lie,” she whispered.

“We’re dead men walking, Cassie,” said Marco, sadly. “And you’ve got nothing to show for it but a scarred freak –” he thumped his hand on his chest – “with secrets you already knew.”

“You’re telling me,” I said, devastated on Cassie’s behalf, angry at Marco for not even trying, “that you don’t know anything? About their security systems? About their weaknesses?”

“Oh, I know plenty about that,” he said. “Problem is, we won’t ever get close enough to try anything. Look, I’m all for going out in a blaze of glory if we have to, if it means something, but anything we try would just be pointless suicide. Even with your contacts in the EF,” he added looking pointedly at Cassie.

“We could try!” Cassie exclaimed.

“Why do you think Visser Two slimed his way out of me so fast?” Marco yelled back. “Dying of starvation is painful, it’s horrific –” Marco shuddered. “He used to starve his enemies, so he knew exactly what it was like. And so did I. I couldn’t wait to feel him suffer, and he knew that too.”

Tears glistened on Marco’s thick eyelashes for just a second before he roughly scrubbed a hand across his face. Exhaling with a trembling breath, he said, “So, he had the last laugh. He crawled out of me before I had the pleasure.” His lip curled in disgust. “You don’t want to win, you want revenge. I get it. You think I’m a coward, but, Cassie, think! Getting revenge on the Yeerks is a fantasy. All we can do is get the last laugh. And we do that by staying alive!”  

“You’re wrong,” Cassie told him. I’d forgotten my hand was on her arm, so it was a surprise when she jerked from my slack grasp. Before I could even react, she was grabbing Marco by the front of his shirt, yanking him upwards off the couch, pulling his face close to hers. “You’re wrong,” she said again.

“You’re crazy,” he told her.

I got in between them best I could, pushing Cassie away and pushing Marco back on the couch.

“Cassie,” I said, “why don’t we just cool down for a while. Think about our options. I’ll take Marco upstairs. You can keep watch down here.”

“Wow,” said Marco, “The General Jake voice. Never thought I’d hear that again.”

“Shut up,” I told him.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” she said, staring into the fireplace at the Yeerk’s body she’d kicked there. “I think a piece of Visser Two might have clung on to his brain somewhere.”

Marco shook his head. “You just can’t admit I’m right,” he said, sneering. He tried to push up from the couch, but his legs were still shaky. I took pity on him even if I was angry. I let him lean on me again as we made our way upstairs.

A candle was burning and we followed the light into the master bedroom where Marco plopped down on the bed, laying back on the mussed and dusty sheets with a sigh.

“I’m going to look for something for the cut on your arm,” I said. He just waved me off without lifting his head.

I scrounged around the connected bathroom and found some rubbing alcohol and gauze. Inside a cabinet, I found some towels that didn’t seem too filthy once I shook them out. It would have to do. There wasn’t running water, but there was a jug on the counter that we could use for washing. I poured some luke-warm water out onto one of the towels so Marco could wipe his sweaty face and get some of the dirt off him.

“Can you make it in here by yourself?” I asked. “We need to check out your arm.”

He rolled out of bed with a groan and shuffled into the bathroom, pausing briefly in the door way, using the frame for support as he pulled off what was left of his tattered and bloody shirt.

He asked, nervous smile on his face, “Where do you want me, doctor?” He was trying to lighten the mood, like he’d always done. My heart clenched painfully.

I pointed and he took a seat on the edge of the bathtub. With the wet towel, he scrubbed over his face, his shoulders, over his chest and stomach and under his arms, wiping away sweat and dirt.

He hissed in pain as I pulled the makeshift bandage off his wound.

“That doesn’t look so bad,” he said through clenched teeth. He howled when I poured the alcohol over it. “But,” he added, sucking in tight little breaths and blowing them out slowly, “it feels worse.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. What else could I do?

“That’s what got you, really?” He asked incredulously, beginning to laugh too. 

I laughed until tears leaked out of my eyes. It wasn’t funny – none of this was – but I couldn’t help it. We’ll have the last laugh, he’d said. That’s what this felt like.

After I fixed up his arm I left him in the bathroom with the change of clothes, giving him the first bit of privacy he'd had in however many years he'd been a host. I crawled into bed, curling into a tight ball and aching for sleep. I drifted on the edge of consciousness, feeling like I was floating outside my body. After a while, I heard Marco rustling around in the room and then his voice drifted towards me, softly.

"Scoot over," he whispered, and I did, giving him room to climb into the bed next to me. I could feel the heat of him behind me, not quite touching but almost. This was familiar, a memory of sharing his or my twin bed on those nights when we slept over, shoulders pressed together on top the covers or feet in each others faces, trying to stifle our laughter before one of our parents came in and told us to go to sleep. It made me as uncomfortable as Cassie's head on my shoulder. I wanted my Marco, not this bitter coward too afraid to fight. 

"I'm not going to thank you," he said. "But I think I can die happy after seeing Visser Two smashed like roadkill."

"I though you wanted to live?"

He laughed. "You got me there. We all die some day, Jake - maybe some day soon. Trust me. I've seen and been the cause of enough death to last a hundred lifetimes. I know more about death than I ever want to. If anything, that's made me more determined to live." He took a breath and laid a tentative hand on my shoulder blade. "I'm telling the Yeerks to shove it in the only way I really can now. They thought they had us, and here we are, still kicking. I want to keep kicking." He laughed again.

I wanted to keep kicking too, in every sense of the word. I wanted to kick the Yeerks off our planet, out of our galaxy, and I wanted to keep myself and the people I loved alive while doing it. I wondered if I'd have to choose one or the other in the end. It was frighteningly likely. 

Marco's hand stayed on my shoulder and, eventually, his breath evened out. He was asleep and soon I followed him.

* * *

Light was shining in my eyes as I cracked them open. I brought a blurry hand up to my face and was relieved to find it wasn't the giant hand of an adult. I was my younger self again. I wondered how long it would last.          


End file.
